


lucky are you who finds me in the wilderness

by slipstream



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Agender Character, Aka halfway through the adventure link panics and runs off to do their own thing, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Gender Identity, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Identity, Loss of Identity, Memory Loss, Mute Link, Other, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Resurrection, Selectively Mute Link, Self-Doubt, Sign Language, Survivor Guilt, refusal of the call
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-05-28 02:39:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15038843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slipstream/pseuds/slipstream
Summary: "Hurry," says Impa, ancient and anxious."Hurry," says the ghost of a woman you've mostly forgotten.The Master Sword burns in your hands as you pull, knees trembling and sweat slick between your shoulder blades.(People keep telling you who you are, the hero you're destined to be.  Eventually, you're going to prove them wrong.)





	1. Prelude - North of Military Training Camp

**Author's Note:**

> This started as an attempt to integrate Link as a forest child into the Breath of the Wild canon, then to rectify Link and Mipha's childhood together with their later scenes as young adults given how Zora age. Add in my preferred play style of "local somewhat feral hero displaced in time fails at social norms while learning to be a person again" and thematic issues of trying to find how you fit in other people's rigid definitions of who you're supposed to be and what you're supposed to do with your life and you get this fic. Chapters lengths may vary drastically according to how scenes end up clustering.
> 
> Feedback/suggestions for improvements on how I incorporate sign language into this fic is more than welcome. Not everyone Link encounters will know sign (or a version of sign that Link also knows), so I'm experimenting with ways to convey differences in dialect and fluency among the characters.

There is a sword in the woods, they say.  Beyond the grey mists and twisting winds, guarded by an endless army of trees grown so close together the sun never breaks through their canopy, it waits for one chosen by destiny to seal away a great darkness. 

Or so they say.  You have not searched for it yourself, forbidden to step beyond the view of the guard towers dotting the perimeter of the camp.  Though your father’s promotion grants you a longer leash than others, you are under no illusion that it is in fact a leash, a tether to keep you within the bounds of rigid military rule. 

You do not like this place.  The land is too open and flat, most of the trees long ago cut to build fences and wagons and the squat square houses of the villages ringing Hyrule Field, the river wide and sluggish and empty.  The people here wear heavy armor and heavier faces, speaking in voices that are too loud and too soft in turn. 

There are rumors of war, though against whom or what, no one is entirely certain.  Your father wakes early and returns to your cramped quarters late, boots heavy and once gentle temper grown short.  It seems like a lifetime since you lived under the cascades of Zora’s Domain, the roaring water filling all the spaces where here you are expected to speak.   

At thirteen summers, your father’s disappointment burns too big for your body to bear.

Still, your silence has its advantages.  If you are patient, if you are still, you are easily forgotten, free to slip between the long rows of tents and beyond the flags marking the northern rim of the muddy parade grounds.  And those that do not forget speak at length to themselves to fill the quiet spaces you’ve shaped around you. 

They say:  the king is dying.

They say:  the young prince—on whose orders your father was withdrawn from the frontier—is prophesied to be the last of his rule.

They say:  soon, you will be old enough to follow your father’s footsteps, old enough to take an honored place among the king’s guard.   

They say:  if you walk too long in the woods north of camp, a great wind will come and push you out again. 

They say:  there is a sword in the woods.  Among other things. 

The road north from the camp—too rocky for wagons, with no outlet that you know of beyond the woods—is less traveled than the road south to the stables, but the local foragers and hunters pass through here frequently enough to keep it clear and well-packed, even as it narrows and narrows until it’s little more than a winding path curving around the base of the mountain. 

Though it’s nearly high noon, tendrils of morning mist still linger, wound tight around the roots of the trees and obscuring the path as you walk.  The trees here are different from those surrounding the Zora kingdom, their branches broader with large, flat leaves round at the base, pointed at the tip.  You pluck one from a low branch and cup it between your palms, marveling at its size, the thickness of the veins beneath your fingers.  You press it to your face, breathing in its faint, spicy smell.  The training camp—clanging and crowded and full of expectations you can’t fulfill—feels a thousand miles away.  You will have to turn back soon. 

You hear a sound in the brush.  Low and rattling.  Almost musical. 

You’ve taken two steps towards it, away from the path, before you realize what you’re doing.  You pause, suddenly aware of the utter quiet of the forest, unbroken by bird song or the chirrup of insects.  Even the sound of your breathing feels hushed, lost among the endless rows of tree trunks. 

You hear the sound again. 

Another unbidden step.  You look over your shoulder, back at the path you’re leaving behind, as if expecting it to disappear between one step and the next.  Ahead of you, the mists clear for a moment, revealing another path—or is it one and the same, the turn lost somewhere in the deepening shadow—shining silver between the trees. 

The rattle chimes out a third time, fainter now and further away.  You hurry to follow it. 

The ground here is softer, like the sands along the shores of Ruto Lake, swallowing your footsteps.  In the distance, you see a low stone archway.  The rattling sound is coming from somewhere beyond it.  The wind pushes against your back.  Whispers a low, sweet song into your ear. 

When you wander back out, sword singing in your hands, the path into the woods is overgrown with wildflowers and scrub grass.  You slash at them idly as you walk, vengeance for the low weeds scratching at the skin of your ankles left exposed by your threadbare, too-short pants.

After a while, the road hardens into well-packed dirt beneath your feet again.  The trees begin to thin, revealing glimpses of blue sky overhead.  You stop, squinting upward at the sun. 

It is so very, very bright. 

 


	2. The Great Plateau

_Link_.

_Link…_

_Open your eyes_.

 

**

 

Your first breath is almost your last, the numbing liquid that has cradled you in endless floating non-space forever and ever suddenly rushing from _outside_ to _in._

You spasm, muscles long forgotten working to push the sour fluid back out again.  It would be easy, whispers a voice, sweet and soft as smoke, to let it end here, to fall back down into the dark and drift.  The easiest thing, really, to sink, to slip forever down and down and down, until…

Your hit something hard and flat.  You remember a world with planar geometry. 

You sit up. 

It takes you several long, hacking minutes to orient yourself in this echoing existence of three dimensions.  Your senses return to you slowly, a blessing as you struggle to make sense of each new source of information.  You feel extraordinarily heavy.  There’s a sour, chemical taste to the air.  Light and shadow come together in strange, incomprehensible shapes.       

You are in a very strange room.  Beyond the reach of the blinding glow of the blue lights hanging above you, thick, shadowed columns covered in pale curving patterns stand silent guard around the room’s oval perimeter.  The dark stone walls are studded with small clusters of faintly glowing circles interconnected with thin gold lines.  At the very center of the room, you are sitting waist-deep in a small, intricately carved oval pool filled with a faintly glowing blue liquid.  The surface ripples sluggishly as you move, but before you can investigate it further it starts to drain away, revealing a complex tangle of tubing and wires. 

You discover, to your surprise, that you have a body, and it is naked.

You stretch your arms in front of you, marveling at the way your bony joints bend and twist, the long lines of raised flesh crisscrossing your pale skin.  Some of the tubing comes with you, their ends disappearing into the soft flesh along your inner forearms.  You grab one and pull, unsheathing the metal needle buried in the long vein of your wrist.  You watch the blood well from the exposed puncture mark.   

Your right arm moves more freely than your left, its movement arrested by a long patch of thick, shining pink tissue stretching from your elbow to halfway across your chest.  You prod at it curiously, noting the cratered asymmetry of your torso, the sunburst of angry flesh wrapping around your ribs and over your shoulder.  The joint cracks warningly as you stretch it, bone grinding rough against bone.  You aren’t sure what to make of the sensation. 

You start to shake.  It is a long time before you realize you are cold. 

 

**

 

<< _Where are we?_ >> you ask, hands shaping the words before the thought has fully formed in your sluggish brain.

You are warmer now, sun burning hot on your back through your thin linen shirt.  The clothes you found folded expectantly at the bottom of a large chest are soft but ill-fitting, as if they had been placed there with someone else in mind.  A sudden motion at the edge of your vision makes your heart thump heavily, but when you turn your head all you see is a blue flash of a feathered wing as a songbird takes flight.  You can hear it, far off in the trees, its three-note call repeating as it seeks its mate. 

Smoke from the little fire floods your nostrils.  The baked apple sits warm and heavy in your cracked leather waist pouch, an anchor keeping your tingling limbs fixed to the earth. 

The old man frowns slightly.  His gaze flicks from your hands, up to the hole in the mountain that leads to the dim room full of strangely humming machines, and back again.  You recognize the expression, but you cannot put a name to it. 

“The Great Plateau,” he says at length.  “Birthplace of the entire kingdom of Hyrule.”  He cocks his head, dark eyes lost in the thick shadow cast by his hood.  “But surely, this you know.”

Your eyes sweep back across the landscape, searching the scattered ruins and distant horizon for something, _anything_ familiar.    

 _Poo-tee-weet?_ calls the bird, also lost, also searching.  _Poo-tee-weet?_

 

**

 

The breeze bends the tall grass silver.  At the far end of the rippling field, a black column of smoke rises into the sky before vanishing into the dark of oncoming night.  You can’t smell the meat from here, but you can see it turning slowly on a crude spit over the oily yellow fire.  Three voices chatter in a language you do not know, squat burnt-orange bodies drawing close to the fire as the evening cools around them. 

You crouch low, slithering between the parted blades silent as thought.  Your stolen club hangs heavy in your hands.  One of them has a shield, roughly hewn and spiked with the bones of an unknown animal.  You measure its weight from a distance, its size relative to your own arm.  Your joints tremble with disuse as you inch closer and closer, but do not give out.  You should be able to wield it with little trouble.

You do not see the old man, but your back crawls with the sensation of being watched.  You sense his approval, somehow.  His relief that of all the things you have forgotten, this is not one of them.

His apple sours in your stomach.  You clench your teeth and prepare once more for battle. 

You’re startled by a sudden blare of trumpet.  An unseen guard perched on a far hill has spotted your movement.  Idiot, _idiot!_   Three sets of glowing eyes turn your way. 

You find your voice, wordless, screaming, but still not loud enough to drown out the high-pitched humming in your ears.  You bring the club down again, and again, and again. 

After a while, the bokoblins make no more noises.  It takes longer still for the humming to fade away.

You’ve broken your club, but gained the shield as well as a short, heavily rusted sword.  You will have to sharpen it before your next attack.  It was almost too dull to finish the job you asked of it.   

The dark stains on the scuffed earth tug briefly at something deep inside you, but you shake your head, pushing it and the accompanying dizziness away.  There’s a hot drumbeat deep in your left shoulder.  The meat on the spit is starting to burn.  Your stomach cramps in an increasingly familiar sensation.

At least the bokoblins are too dead to care if you eat their dinner. 

You sink in your teeth hungrily.  The meat is charred on the outside, nearly raw closer to the bone.  Red juice dribbles hot down your chin, sweeter by far than the old man’s apple.   

The next time you see him, blood staining your tunic and a quiver full of arrows strapped to your back, he has the nerve to look pleased.

 

**

 

It takes you a while to realize the monks seated cross-legged atop the temple alters are dead.  They don’t look the way you expect dead people to look—the cruel illusion of sleep as rigor passed quickly blistering and swelling into a green and black mockery of the person until time and maggots reduce them to greasy bone—though it troubles you as to why you should have such a firmly-entrenched opinion. 

How long ago the mummified husks that wait for you at the end of each shrine lived, you do not know.  Their dry skin looks like hardened leather stretched tight over their bones, their withered fingers black and inflexible as tree branches.   They speak without moving their mouths or their hands, voices echoing between your ears in a way that leaves them ringing for hours afterward, and once the orb of pulsing light passes from their chest to yours they collapse into nothing, carried away on a spectral wind despite the stale, still air. 

You climb the crumbling remains of a turret at the edge of the plateau and peer down into the misty lands below.  With the slate you can faintly make out roads and the ruins of other structures, but there is no movement in the mist, no sounds in the night but crickets and the distant howling of unseen beasts.

As far as you know, the old man is the only other person in the entire world.

 

**

 

With the wide gaps between the dark crumbling timbers and tattered oilcloth roof the little hut can barely be considered a shelter, but that doesn’t make the tiny space any less claustrophobic.  It smells unpleasantly of rot, of brackish water and animal parts left to decay where they fell and the mold that grows under a thick carpet of rain-soaked leaf litter.  There’s a pile of debris in one corner that you dare not overturn—faded rags and yellowing bone just visible beneath the pine needles scattered all across the hard earth floor.

Despite the filth, exhaustion keeps you tethered to the hut’s rickety cot.  You’ve spent the last few nights squatting next to campfires out in the open, listening intently for the sound of ambush.  The few snatches of sleep you’ve managed to catch have been restless and filled with unsettling, poorly-formed dreams. 

You are in desperate need of rest.  Tomorrow you start the long climb up the mountain to the shrine waiting at its snowy peak.  Yet despite your weariness, sleep doesn’t come.  You toss restlessly beneath the ragged blanket, uncertain whether it’s the cot, the hut, or the knowledge of the bokoblin’s camp less than a quarter mile from the door that keeps you awake.

At least the dark brown pelt tucked over top the cot’s thin, lumpy mattress is dry if rather musty smelling.  You drag your hands back and forth along the thick fur, reveling in the soft brush of the animal’s undercoat against your stinging palms.  Your hands fit easily around every weapon you find, but the soft skin there blisters and cracks as if they have never known work.    

You debate re-lighting the cooking fire and dragging the fur out under the stars, where the ground is rocky but there are no black wooden walls closing tight around you like a cage.  You debate taking the axe propped in the far corner and making your way down to the bokoblin camp with its soft grass and promise of softer dreams if you spill enough blood.  The thought brings the taste of metal to your mouth.

You tangle your fingers deeper into the fur.  It’s odd how much newer the bokoblin structures look when compared to the old man’s hut, the wood of their lookout platforms red under the sun and rope joinings barely blackened by weather.  You wonder how long ago the old man must have built it, what brought him here to the plateau to begin with.  Where did he come from, before he came to this lonely place?  How did he learn to make words with his mouth instead of his hands?

Your chest aches, ribs constrained by the too-tight linen shirt.  You rub at them idley, feeling the texture of your scars through the fabric, the steady thump of your heart. 

If it weren’t for the warm doublet folded beneath your head and the yellowed diary open on the roughly-hewn table, you’d suspect that the old man was a figment of your imagination.  Maybe there _aren’t_ any people in the world at all.  Maybe there are only mummies and monsters, by which logic you guess you are also a monster. 

You stare up at the stars through the holes in the canvas, turning the idea over in your head.   It’s less frightening, the more you think about it.  Strangely comforting, even. 

If you are a monster, then there is a reason you find solace in a blood-splattered blade. 

Then again, you think, turning over to bury your face into the soft, musty fur.  Maybe you are wrong. 

Maybe you are dead, and you just haven’t realized it yet. 

 

**

 

Blinding green light floods the high stone steeple.  You hold up a hand, trying to shield yourself, but there’s no escaping it.  It cuts through you like a physical thing, hot as embers, sharp as ice. 

You remember fear.

Fire encircles the old man and swallows him whole.  The crowned figure left in his place burns bright as the sun. 

Wreathed in flame, long coat billowing in an unfelt wind, he at last tells you who he is.

Then, in a ringing voice that demands no contradiction, King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule tells you who you are.


	3. Outpost Ruins to South of Squabble River

Two days into your journey to Kakariko Village, you suspect you are already lost. 

You frown down at your slate, twisting and turning it this way and that, but between the tiny screen and the lack of topographical features the lone, faintly blinking blip proves more taunting than useful.  You don’t even have the sun to navigate by, the sky overhead completely obscured in thick, grey clouds.  Your left shoulder throbs in warning, but to what end you have no idea. 

Some fated hero you’re turning out to be. 

The problem, you suspect, had begun in the ruins just beyond the plateau’s crumbling walls.  It was the flags, probably once blood-dark but now a faded russet, standing looming guard over buildings completely leveled by time.  The sound of their slow flapping had made your ears twist this way and that, until you’d had to fold them flat against your skull and hold them tight with your hands in an attempt to drown them out.  You’d almost walked straight into a moblin, barely escaping its snapping jaws by running as fast as your skinny legs could carry you deeper and deeper into the ruins, tripping over rotted bed frames and the twisted corpses of guardians  and stray pieces of stone block hidden in the tall grass until the building footprints had grown sparser and sparser until the horrible flapping of heavy canvas at last faded away. 

You’d quickly found the road again, winding between the hillocks, but the longer you walk the more uncertain you are that it’s the same road you first set out on. 

Chewing your lip, you try to judge your direction relative to the distant mountains. The ghost of King Rhoam had told you to follow the road until it crossed the river, but so far you’ve seen no water beyond the shallow pools studded with guardians rimming the outskirts of the ruins.  More concerningly, the land around you seems to be rising steadily upward, the soil of the sloping hillsides thinning until the long grass gives way to bare patches of slick grey rock.  Without memories or a map to draw from, all you have are gut instincts to guide you, and the shape of _river_ in your hands is low, flat, and winding.  Not the sort of thing you’re likely to find waiting at the top of a craggy hilltop.

Then again, maybe from a higher vantage point, you’ll be able to set yourself right again. 

There’s an eerie, buzzing charge in the air as you start to climb the hill.  The wind rattles the leaves of the scattering of the nearby saplings, mussing your hair and running cool up the back of your shirt.  Everything looks so _green_ despite the ever-darkening sky.  The hill’s gentle slope proves to be a deception, and you’re forced into a four-limbed scramble over the exposed rock the closer you get to the top.  You start to pant, forearms trembling as they’re forced to take more and more of your weight.  You wonder if you were this weak before your long sleep. 

When you finally pull yourself to the very top, a large, solitary rock is waiting for you.  You scowl at it, cross that even stone seems to scale hills more easily than you do.  You clamber atop it in a fit of pique, satisfied by the long scuffs of dirt left by your shoes.

You scan the horizon from your less-than-lofty perch, one hand pushing back your bangs as the other fumbles for your hair-tie.  It’s a job forcing your hair back into its ponytail as the wind swirls around you.  A hawk circling overhead offers a screeching critique. 

Ironically, your sight of Dueling Peaks is entirely obscured by an even taller, rockier hill.  You can see a glimmer of water at the end of the road you’ve been traveling but judging by the size of the great stone bridge spanning it the water is no river, but an immense lake.  You turn your back to it, tracing the road back in the opposite direction, where it disappears once more into the hills.  You can just make out the fluttering ghost of tall flags and a lone stone spire done in the same architectural style as the ruins piercing the low black clouds. 

You _have_ been traveling in the wrong direction, but if you double back it looks like the road will eventually put you back on course.  You fiddle with your slate, trying to remember the settings needed to set a beacon. 

The rock beneath your feet trembles. 

You step off it hurriedly, hand going instantly for your weapon.  You stare at the rock, waiting for it to move again, and feeling increasingly ridiculous the longer it stays still as stone.    

Because it _is_ stone.

And stone doesn’t move.

At least, the little ones generally don’t.

You don’t think you were imagining things.  Maybe there’s a lizard holed up underneath the stone, a big one angry that you’ve been using its house as a stepping-stool.  Sheathing your sword, you crouch down beside the rock, poking at it curiously.  It wobbles faintly.

You pick up the rock.  

“ _Yah_ ha— _OOF!_ ” says a voice, tiny and not-quite real as you drop the rock right on top of it. 

There’s a sickening _thump_ , then another as the rock falls heavily to the ground before rolling halfway down the hill.  Your hands flap in an automatic, flustered apology, then freeze, shocked into stillness by the sight before you.  

If this is a monster, it is completely unlike any you’ve seen so far.  It barely comes up to your thighs, squat, pale brown body thick and rough like the base of a tree limb with stubby, abruptly tapered limbs.  White and green patches reminiscent of moss and lichen dot the bark-like skin, and the top of the creature’s head is forked, further enhancing the impression of a broken tree limb suddenly come to life.  Strangest of all, however, is the large, spade-shaped yellow-gold leaf worn like a mask where its face should be, speared on a short, sharp protrusion like a nose with jagged punctures giving the appearance of beady eyes and a triangular mouth. 

You blink down at it, absolutely dumbfounded.  The little creature wiggles happily, the tear in its leaf face where a mouth should be curled upward in something like a smile.  There’s a rattling sound deep in its body almost like musical notes. 

With a distant rumble of thunder, it starts to rain. 

The first small patterings give way quickly to fat, closely spaced drops, soaking you in moments.  You throw your hands up in exasperation, but your annoyance quickly gives way to fear as you spot a flash of white light arc across the dark horizon.  Seconds later, the thunder rumbles through you, low but louder than before, certainly far too close for comfort.

You have to find shelter.

The little creature bounces up and down in front of you, the rattling in its body growing louder and more excited.  Once it has your attention, it turns and starts skipping rapidly down the hill, each jump carrying it higher and further than its squat, spindly legs should be capable of. 

You have to hurry to keep up, boots slipping on the wet rock and half-falling down the slick grass of the steep hillside.  You can barely hear the creature’s contented chirping and clicking over the heavy downpour.  It leads you the base of the hill, almost to the road, where the grass gives way abruptly to a shortish sheer rockface with several large boulders clustered at the base.  Before you can fully ponder this geological oddity—maybe the road is actually an ancient creek bed—the little creature turns, waves at you excitedly with one of its stumpy, stick-like limbs, and disappears between the cracks in the boulders.

You yelp in alarm as you tumble the last ten feet, landing gracelessly in the mud.  Another flash of lightning illuminates the horizon—much closer and brighter than before.  Your teeth click together sharply as the thunder booms overhead, nicking your tongue. 

You could probably clear the boulders away with a bomb rune, but the gaps between the stones look just large enough to squeeze through and you’re frantic to get out of the storm as quickly as possible.  You wedge yourself in the crack the creature disappeared through, slithering on your belly and pulling yourself forward into the dark with your hands.  You can hear the rattling again, the sound amplified and echoing faintly from somewhere behind the boulders.  You wonder distantly why you feel no fear, following this thing into the dark.

The narrow gap between the boulders suddenly widens, and you collapse face first onto a surprisingly soft carpet of cool grass and dense clover.  You blink, expecting dark and finding a round, low cavern filled with ghostly blue-green light.  Clusters of strange, glowing rocks dot the rim of the little hollow, their dim light filling the pale mushrooms and drooping, bell-shaped flowers that grow at their base with an unearthly radiance.

At the center of the hollow, in a cluster of tall flowers that shift gold to ruby to gold again, the little creature stares at you expectantly. 

You sit up on your knees, staring in amazement at this strange, secret place under the hill.  Lightning strikes a nearby hillside, but with the thick shielding of earth overhead the deafening boom has no power here. 

<< _Thank you_ ,>> you say, flat hand falling slowly from your mouth. 

With a rattle almost like a giggle, the creature vanishes in a puff of tiny leaves.

You touch the spot where it stood, almost convinced this is nothing more than a dream.  Your hand closes around something small and hard.  You hold it up to your face, squinting to get a better look.  It’s a seed, dark brown with a pointed tip and almost a quarter the size of your palm.  There’s a faint but undeniable smell—cloves and must and dirt after a hard rain and torn grass and sea salt and fennel and a thousand other fleeting, conflicting odors that come together confusingly into a single scent that burns deep into your lungs, warming you from the inside.

You are hungry, you are tired, and you are soaked to the bone, but here in this little hollow, flanked on all sides by a rainbow of growing things, there is at last a promise of rest.

You sleep, after a while, longer and deeper than you have since first waking.  When morning dawns dry and golden the little hollow is nothing but a barren scoop of rock.  The seed clenched in your hand is real, though, its scent unwavering and filling you with an equally indefinable ache.  You tuck it into your waist pouch, squeeze back out between the boulders, and set off north, back towards the skeletal, sun-faded flags. 

 

**

 

When you see the white stream of smoke twisting up above the dusky forest, your first thought is that you’ve found another bokoblin camp.  Your stomach twists angrily on itself, mouth wetting at the thought of roasting meat.  The few raw mushrooms and nuts you’ve managed to forage on the roadside these past few days have done little to assuage your hunger.  You’d spotted a boar rooting through the underbrush yesterday, but with less than a handful of arrows rattling in your quiver you’d been reluctant to attempt the shot. 

You’re more than happy to use them now if it means a quicker end to the fight.  You’re still limping badly from your last barely-successful encounter with a moblin, your left side one solid bruise from ribs to knee where it caught you full-on with its club.  At least the pain has been a distraction from the hunger, or maybe it’s the hunger that’s been distracting you from the pain.  

Your hands tremble faintly as you nock an arrow.  You feel oddly disjointed, as if some of the threads connecting your conscious to your body have come unraveled.  You can barely feel the roughly-made wood and bone bow in your hands.  With any luck the bokoblins will have a few bundles of arrows tucked in amongst their provision stores.  If they don’t…

Well.  You suspect this won’t be the first time in your life you’ve pulled arrows out of corpses. 

Crouching low, you slip into the underbrush.  Some of the quivering weakness clutching at your chest leaves you as you step from road to wild.  The thick trees are your allies, providing ample cover as you creep silent as shadow closer and closer to the fire.  You’ll have to be smart about this.  You barely have the strength to swing the moblin’s great spiked club strapped to your back, and you have no guarantee that you’ll be able to wrench a lighter weapon from your enemy mid-battle.  With the element of surprise you can handle two, maybe three bokoblins at most.  Any more than that is a gamble of how far your adrenaline will take you. 

You’re close enough now to hear the crackling of the fire.  You raise your bow and hold your breath, ears cocked for the tell-tale grunting and clicking of bokoblin speech, but there’s no sound but the crackling of flames.  If you shift to the right, you can just make out a lone figure lounging against a log on the far side of the fire, its body obscured by the roaring camp fire.  You can smell food, but it’s different than the smoky odor of roasting meat and fish mixed with rotting heaps of old fruit that you’ve smelled at other camps.  It smells herbier, almost earthy, with a hint of something spicy you can’t fully describe. 

Your stomach growls loud enough for the Goddess herself to hear.   

The figure sits up with a start.  “Who’s there?” he calls, craning his head to get a better look around the flames.  “Hey!  _Hey_ , I see ya there!  Come on out where I can see ya even better!”

Unsure what else to do, you ease out of the shadowed brush and into the firelight, surprised to find yourself in a neat, circular clearing with a crude lean-to and a second, smaller fire crackling merrily beneath a wide cooking pot.  

“Oh!  H-h- _hey_ , don’t shoot me, now!”  The figure raises his empty hands to shoulder level, round face going pale as he stares nervously at the glittering tip of your arrow. 

You blink rapidly.  This is no monster.  This is a _person_. 

His expression twists, brow furrowing.  He raises his hands a little higher.  “Ya deaf or somethin’?  I said _don’t_ _shoot!_  If it’s money ya want, you’re robbin’ the wrong merchant.  Business ain’t exactly boomin’ these days.”

The words finally click in your brain.  You lower your bow, eyes darting from his hands to his mouth to the wickedly curved axe sunk deep in a stump behind them and back again.  The merchant lets out a long sigh of relief.

“Then again, don’t look like the robbin’ business is doin’ ya much better, friend.”  You can feel him eying you over, making note of your scavenged monster gear before measuring your thin limbs and sunken belly beneath the thick padding of your doublet.  His own clothes are far from ornate, but his ribbed white undershirt is clean and his leather-trimmed vest well-tailored to his stocky frame.  You can almost taste the moment he decides you are less of a threat than initially assumed.  “Or are you a traveler?”

The more he talks, the dizzier you feel.  It wasn’t like this with the old m—with King Rhoam.  You’d glimpsed how big the world is, up on the plateau.  Is all of it filled with people like this?  Solid, soft-fleshed people that look like you but talk with their mouths?  People you don’t have to murder on sight? 

Your stomach lets out another traitorous growl.

The merchant laughs, taking half a step closer, then a full step back as your hands instinctively raise your bow back to center mass.

“Easy, easy.  Looks like you’ve been out in the wild for a bit, yeah?  Long enough to get jumpy, yeah?”  He laughs again, a low, soothing chuckle, and gesture towards a large, thickly-stuffed pack leaning against the log with a jerk of his head.  “Name’s Giro.  I’m a traveling merchant.  Might be able to help ya out if you’re willing to barter.  And you are…?”

Numbly, you finally drop your bow, spelling out one-handed the name you’ve been hearing in your head. 

“Oh,” Giro says, round, freckled face turning steadily red as he stares at your hands.  “I, uh…  I didn’t know ya were… When I asked earlier if you…” 

He runs both hands heavily through his thick brown hair, mouth twisted in a grimace.  He shakes his head hastily as you start to sign.  “Sorry,” he says.  “Sorry, I don’t…  Uhhh, here!” 

He retreats to his pack, waving you over with a broad sweep of his arms and a lot of exaggerated smiling and nodding.  “Universal language,” he mutters, seemingly to himself, and pulls out several large, cloth wrapped bundles.  “One of ‘em, anyway.” 

The first bundle unfolds to reveal a heap of red mushrooms, faintly withered but more than edible and larger than any of the mushrooms you’ve found by the roadside.  The second bundle, mysteriously, holds nothing but several large, faintly pink stones, but the third, fourth, and fifth bundles respectively yield fat, twisted carrots, clusters of fresh herbs tied together with string, and several round, nearly black lumps of unknown origin that smell strongly of earth. 

You squat down to inspect his goods, reaching instinctively for one the lumps, curious to see what it feels like under your fingers.  With a vigorous shake of his head Giro pulls the bundle back towards him and waves your grasping hands away.  Silently, he holds up one loosely-cupped hand with his palm turned towards himself and rubs his thumb rapidly back and forth across his first two fingers.  He points at you, repeats the gesture, indicates dramatically at himself with both hands, and then pantomimes giving one of earthy brown-black lumps to you. 

<< _Yes yes okay,_ >> you sign, eager to move this transaction along.  You may not be so solid on exact denominations, but the general concept of money is not something you’ve forgotten entirely.  << _How much?_ >>

Silently, teeth bared in an even more robotic smile, Giro begins his pantomime again. 

You let out a frustrated grunt.  << _Just say what you mean with mouth sounds,_ >> you say.  << _I can understand them.  I’m hearing._ >> 

His eyes widen with panic as your hands flash irritably, so you repeat yourself more slowly, placing an extra emphasis on _hearing_.  That doesn’t seem to do much to clarify the situation, so you cup one hand around your ear, cock it toward him as if listening, and tap vigorously at your chest.

“Oh you, uh, _can_ hear me?”

You nod empathetically, which only makes him flush a deeper crimson. 

“You just don’t…oh.   _Ooooooh_.  Got it!”

His tone isn’t unkind, but it still makes your insides squirm. 

“I mean, it’s more than understandable, right?  Fiven the circumstances.  Not like there’s a lot of chances to chat out here anyway, is there?  Unless you speak monster, I guess.  Crazy times we live in, eh?”

A sudden, loud hissing from the small cooking fire makes your head jerk up, ears pricked on high alert.  Giro’s own ears twitch forward inquisitively as he turns to follow your gaze.  With a yelp, he abandons his wares and rushes over to the boiling-over pot, swearing and kicking dirt onto the embers until the frothing liquid settles back into a low simmer.

Even half-burnt, whatever Giro’s cooking smells _amazing._

“Sorry,” Giro grimaces, spotting your undisguised interest.  “I didn’t make enough for two.  I have all the fixings for it here, though, if ya want to buy them.”

He points out each ingredient, naming it and its price as he goes:  hylian herbs, rock salt, and hearty truffles.  Rummaging through your waist pouch, you offer up a few of the strange, brightly colored prisms of glass you’ve found tucked away in chests or half-buried in the dirt.  He seems almost disappointed, but takes two red, one blue, and three green pieces, closing your palm around the rest.

“Lastly, you’ll need some of this.”  He pulls a small, glass jar filled with a blood-red powder out of one pocket, holding it up almost reverently.  “It’s not for sale,” he says by way of apology, “but a pinch goes a long way.  I go into the forest all on my own to get my wares, but there are far safer ways to get ‘em.  Such as buying’ from travelers like you.  That’s how I got a hold of this stuff so far away from Death Mountain.  So, if ya ever happen to have anything rare you’d be interested in sellin’, you come sniff me out.  I’ll always give you a fair price.”

You nod absently, more focused on turning the truffle over and over in your hands.  It’s firmer than you expected, with a bumpy exterior that tickles your palms intriguingly.  You hold the truffle up to your nose, breathing in the earthy smell, then sink your teeth into it experimentally.  A light, musty flavor blooms across your tongue. 

Giro watches you with an odd expression on his face but offers no comment as he scrapes the last dregs of his own meal to his bowl.  He does, however, let you borrow his hunk of smoked lard to grease the pot.  While the herbs brown in the reducing fat, you dig your fingers into the truffle, breaking it into smaller and smaller pieces, ignoring Giro’s increasingly round-eyed stare from across the fire as you do so. 

You have to crack the rock salt a few times against the edge of the pot before you get any grains small enough to cook with.  When it comes time to add the red powder Giro makes a strangled noise as you tilt the bottle, but with a dexterity that surprises even you you tap out only a pinch worth of powder over the ragged truffle pieces and thin herb sauce. 

You’re too impatient with hunger to let it simmer as long as it probably should, but while the end result doesn’t look like the contents of Giro’s bowl, the smell is the same one that drew you into the camp.  Crouched low over the cooking pot, you use the ladle to shovel it directly into your mouth, burning your lips and scalding your soft palate. 

It is, you suspect, the best thing you’ve ever eaten. 

“Goddess, were you raised in a _tree_?” Giro says, once you’ve demolished the dish and leaned back on your heels to lick the last of the sauce contentedly from your fingers.   He’s smiling as if it’s a joke, but there’s an edge to the set of his shoulders that makes your own spine prickle warily.  His knuckles are white where they wrap around his empty bowl. 

You wipe at your mouth roughly with the back of one hand.  Giro shifts his position on the log to keep the main camp fire between you. 

 

**

 

It’s full dark now, the forest around you a shrieking chorus of insects.  “You’re welcome to grab a spot by the fire,” Giro says, too polite a businessman to ask you to leave, too wary of something in your demeanor to make room for you in the lean-to.  “Us Hylians are few and far between these days.  Safety in numbers, yeah?” 

You feel more solid for having eaten, more rooted in your own body.  You sign a platitude that you know Giro won’t understand, head tilted back to watch the sparks from the campfire drift up into the night sky, fleeting flashes of red and gold quickly swallowed by black. 

Giro reaches into his vest pocket and pulls out a long pipe and a thick paper envelope filled with dark, roughly chopped dried herbs.  You wrinkle your nose as he packs the herbs into the pipe’s shallow bowl and lights them with a stray piece of still-burning charcoal speared on the tip of his dagger.  You know the smell—sour twisting to sweet and vaguely medicinal—but you can’t place from where.  You run your tongue along the inside of your teeth.  You’re missing a few, off to one side, but the gums there are smooth, the loss old enough that your body’s forgotten it.

“Just where do ya hail from anyway, friend?” Giro says at length.  He looks older like this, wreathed in smoke and night, his round face less boyish and more road-hardened.  You remember standing in the crumbling temple steeple, staring out at the twisted black shadow at the center of the horizon, the hulking knot of malice visible over a hundred miles away.  In your hundred years of sleep, Giro and Giro’s forefathers and Giro’s forefather’s forefathers have known nothing but apocalypse.  

You shrug, point towards the road, make a walking motion with your fingers, then point back in the rough direction of the Great Plateau.  He frowns. 

“West?  Really?  Wasn’t much out there last time I passed through.”  He takes a long, contemplative drag on his pipe. “You see anything other than rubble and moblin shit?”

You nod.  With a long stick, you carefully scratch the outline of the leaf-faced creature into the dusty earth beside the fire.  Whatever his reservations may be, Giro leans over and cranes his neck to get a better look, frown deepening. 

“What issat?  Some kinda lizard?”

You huff, shaking your head.  You try to ad more detail to the tiny figure—hands like twigs, features made of black shadows, skin wrinkled and cracked like tree bark—but his guesses only grow more and more abstract.

It is, admittedly, a rather crude drawing. 

This would be easier, you think for the first time since waking, if you could make the complicated speech mouth sounds.  It’s a thought that makes your heart pound and your palms slick.  You rock restlessly on your heels, teeth clenched tight as your breathing grows shallower and shallower.

Why _don’t_ you talk with mouth sounds instead of your hands?  You can make other mouth sounds—can scream, can laugh, can groan and sob and hiccup and whimper—so why…

You’re feeling light-headed again.  You suck in a deep breath, eyes fixed on the drawing scratched in the dirt, half-real in the flickering light of the camp fire. 

When you breathe out, your tongue rolls against your teeth in a loud, rapid-fire mimic of the musical rattle the creature had made when it spoke. 

Giro almost chokes on a lungful of smoke, reeling backward as if burned. 

“A korok!” he says, eyes round and very, very white.  “You’re telling me you saw a _korok_?!”

He stares down at the drawing as if he’s just seen a ghost.  Unconsciously, your hand drifts to your waist pouch and the dark, fragrant seed tucked within.    

Giro shakes his head.  It’s several long puffs before he speaks again.  “I heard one, once, when I was out foragin’ deep in Hickaly Woods.”  He waves one hand over his shoulder, vaguely east.  “Real damp kind of morning, could barely see a thing even with a lantern, mist was so thick.  Probably shouldn’t have been out there, what with the bears, but the bokoblins like to make camp next to the river and I thought I’d press my luck.” 

He rubs roughly at his face with the heel of one palm, eyes still fixed on the drawing in the dirt.  “ _Goddess,_ I can’t believe you got that close a look at one and lived to tell the tale.  They like to get people lost, ya know.  Lure them off the path and deeper and deeper into the fog until—”

He bangs the hollow log with his fist, loud and booming and sudden enough that you tip over backward, scrabbling in the dirt. 

For a moment, you’re embarrassed by your reaction—even Giro lets out a short, almost apologetic burst of laughter—but then your lungs are full of smoke and the air is full of screaming and your hand reaches for the hilt of a blade that isn’t strapped to your back but _should_ be oh goddess oh _goddess_ where did it—?

 

**

 

Eventually, you come back to yourself.  You do not remember where you went.  Giro hovers nearby, arms suspended in mid-air, but does not touch, does not offer words of comfort.  There’s fear in his eyes.  Fear of you.  Fear of the night and the monsters waiting within.  Fear of the great, shrieking shadow that eats and eats at the very heart of the world.    

You curl up next to the camp fire—both hands tight around the rough handle of the moblin club—and manage something close to sleep.

You dream of climbing, of sinking your fingers over and over into rough bark, muscles unburdened by gravity. 

Dark leaves brush against your face gentle as kisses.  There’s light overhead, distant and unthinkably bright.  Low, rattling music in your ears. 

(You want…)

You are floating.  You are burning.  Where is your sword?  Where is the—?

(You want to go…)

_Where where where is where is—?_

When you wake, Giro is still sitting up in the lean-to, his packet of smoking herbs open and empty between his feet.  There are dark circles beneath his eyes, almost blue in the pre-dawn twilight  All that’s left of the camp fire is dark, smoldering ash.

“Ya know,” he coughs, as you pull yourself to your feet and check the straps of your gear.  “For being mute and all, you sure do talk a lot in your sleep.”

There’s a small pile of mushrooms laid next to your shield.  You reach into your pouch, but he folds his arms across his chest and refuses to accept payment.

You gnaw on a raw truffle all the way back to the road.

It’s not as good cold as it is cooked, but it quiets the restless twist in you for now. 


	4. Kakariko Village

Night feels colder, here on the exposed road snaking up the cliff face.  Your horse’s flanks are damp with weariness, chilling you further.  You should probably make camp, but you press her on guiltily, still unnerved by the assassin waiting for you on the far side of Kakariko Bridge. 

They had called you hero.  They had said it with a sneer, as if the title made you not their enemy, but something beneath them.  Something worthy of scorn. 

They had known you by your face. 

You keep thinking about the way they had moved, laughing and twitching and vanishing in and out of sight.  There’s blood on your sword still, from where you caught them deep along the thigh.  The blood had arched high, splattering hot against your chest before the assassin vanished with a final curse, leaving their wickedly curved sickle behind. 

It had fit easily in your hand when you’d picked it up.  Just as every weapon you’ve encountered does.

The road narrows as you climb higher and higher above the flat, grassy plain.  You try to pull Roseberry further away from the edge, unnerved by the long, sheer drop, but the jumble of boulders at the cliff’s base force you back onto the main rut of travel.  She tosses her head irritably, and no amount of patting or soft cooing seems to sooth her.  You are both tired and irritable after the long day’s ride.  The moment she first stumbles over a loose stone in the road, you decide you have to stop for the night, no matter your fear.

Whatever this Impa has to say, you hope it’s worth the week of hard travel. 

Peering ahead, you can just make out a flatter-looking section with a handful of squat trees growing along the road’s edge.  It will have to do.  At least you’ll have a place to tie up your horse, and the line of trees will provide minimal cover from the wind.

Roseberry pricks her ears forward and raises her weary head to sniff cautiously at the air.  She lets out a faint snort, ears now flat against her skull, and shakes her head, rattling her bridle.  Curious, you cock your own ears, one hand tight on the reins while the other drifts to the weapons slung across your back.

Someone is crying in the road. 

“Help!” calls a voice, soft and almost swallowed by the wind.  “Oh _help_ , they are lost!  Stolen, _shakalah_ , help!”

The voice seems to be coming from just up ahead, but no matter how hard you squint you can’t make out any figures in the road.  Only the faint outline of the trees, barely visible even in the glow of the three-quarter moon. 

The cries grow louder as you draw closer to the small copse of trees.  Roseberry dips her head up and down restlessly, steps growing slower and slower.  You tighten your thighs around her barrel, but some instinct prevents you from urging her into a faster trot.  The moon disappears behind a cloud, plunging the rocky trail into near-complete darkness.

You are nearly level with the trees now.

“ _Shakalaaaahhh…_ ” moans the voice from just behind the closest tree.  It looks different than the rest of its brethren—shorter but thick as a boulder at its base, its bark pale and split in long horizontal strips. 

The wind shifts direction, rattling the tree limbs like bones.  The pale tree sways forward and backward, out of time with the wind.  “Lost…” whimpers the voice, high-pitched but with an undeniable rattle reverberating through the vowels.  “ _Stolen…_ ”

Your knuckles clench white around the reigns, the small hairs along your arms and the back of your neck standing straight at attention. 

The voice isn’t coming from _behind_ the tree…

The tree dips forward once more, thick leaves almost blocking the path, and draws in a great, snuffling breath. 

Slowly, slowly, the trunk twists until the large leaf speared on a low branch—less like a face and more like a blood-stained maw—is turned to face you. 

“Hello?” it says.  The rattling in its body is deeper but no less distinct.  “Hello?”

You remember Giro’s round white face.  The unearthly smell of the korok seed still tucked safely in your pouch. 

Roseberry comes to a dead halt, head reared back as far as the tack will let her, stumbling on the rocky path as she tries to step backward. 

You dig your heels hard into her sides.  Maybe if you both keep very still…

“I see you!” it says.  “I _smell_ you!  You have what I want!  Hello!  _Hellooooooo_ …?  Can you see me?  Can you hear me?”

The road is too narrow and rocky for you to safely turn around.  You don’t know how fast it can move.  Whether it will try to chase you. 

There is only one path to take. 

You keep your eyes locked on the road in front of you as you silently urge Roseberry forward.  The spirit looms larger and larger in your peripheral vision, immense and unnervingly solid, its skin white as teeth beneath its dark crown of leaves. 

You are close enough to touch it.  You can taste your heart in your throat, black and beating like a drum ready for war. 

“ _Please_ ,” it whimpers.  “Help me, _see_ me…”

One long, skeletal branch grazes over the top of your head.  It takes all your willpower not to flinch. 

Roseberry shudders beneath you, snorting and chomping at her bit.  You are full level with the tree spirit now.  You are half a length ahead of it.  A full length.  And another.  And another.

You feel it twist in place to watch you pass, but it does not move to follow you. 

You do not dare look back, even as the road turns to disappear into a gap between the rocks.  The tree spirit’s mournful cries trail after you on the wind. 

 “Lost…   _Stolen_.  Oh, help me, help me, _shakalaaaah…_ ”

 

**

 

The main room of the large counsel house is uncluttered by furniture, its thick wooden support beams adorned with geometric tapestries and dark floors covered in soft rugs, but something about this space makes you think of the chamber deep underground where you first awoke.  Maybe it’s the windows—covered in rice paper and tightly shuttered to block out any hint of the cool, rain-drizzled morning beyond—or the pulsing orange glow of the great orb set on a pedestal in the corner.  A young woman with white hair twisted up in twin buns dips her head dutifully as she carries in a large tray laden with tiny cups and a gently steaming teapot.  The smell is a soft, gentle accompaniment to the incense burning low before the orb.  Your stomach twists sourly.

Lady Impa accepts the tea without comment.  She is old, older even than the ghost of King Rhoam, her deeply-lined skin thin as paper and her sagging cheeks spotted with the blotches of extreme age.  She looks too tiny and frail to support the elaborate, pointed headdress perched upon her head, but she balances it with ease, the metal pendants suspended from the broad, embroidered straw rim swaying gently as she takes a slow, steadying sip. 

“A hundred years ago,” she says, “the kingdom of Hyrule was destroyed.  After you fell, Princess Zelda’s final wish was to place you in a sacred slumber.  And then, all alone...”

Her thin body trembles briefly beneath her thick robes.  It’s a long, uncomfortable moment before she speaks again.  On the wall to your left hangs a large painting of a grassy field beneath a storm-dark sky.  The field is littered with the black, hulking husks of guardians, their eyes dark but turned as one to stare back at you.   

“Alone…”  Her quivering voice cracks, then steadies again.  “Princess Zelda went to face Ganon.  But before she went to nobly meet her fate, the princess entrusted me with some words she wished to say to…  Link?  Are you paying attention?”

A sharp, sudden snapping sound pulls your focus out of the painting and back into your body.  You blink as Impa snaps her bony fingers again.

“Link…”  She slashes one hand in a slow back and forth arc through the air, thumb and first two fingers extended in the _lei_ finger-sigil.  “Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

She signs as she speaks, arthritic hands fumbling some of the finer gestures but execution smooth and perfectly timed to her mouth-speech.  The signs have the fluidity of a phrase frequently repeated.  You frown, ears low.

<< _I understand,_ >> you sign, movements abrupt.  << _Didn’t have to snap._ >>

Impa lets out a single huff of laughter, a ghost of a smile pulling at one corner of her mouth. 

“You have not changed a bit.  I apologize.  When we first met, you were…”  She trails off, deep in thought, and takes a slow sip of her tea.  “You were different than the warrier you ultimately became.”

You shift uncomfortably, knees aching from so long kneeling, but she offers no further explanation, spoken or signed. 

“That is the ash swamp of Blatchery Plain,” she says, indicating the painting with a tilt of her ancient head.  The metal pendants ringing her headdress jingle softly.  “You passed through its western rim as you came up from the river.”

<< _Caught my horse there_ ,>> you sign.  << _Cream with chestnut spots.  Her name is Roseberry._ >> You rapidly touch your right and left cheeks with the first two fingers of your right hand, then grasp your left pinky and give it an affectionate wiggle. 

Your hands hesitate mid-air, unsure what else to say.  You turn back to the painting, noting after further study the rubble half-swallowed by the long grass, the dark smoke of a distant fire cutting across the horizon.  Why would anyone own such a thing, let along hang it so prominently?  << _Ugly picture.  Should have more horses in it._ >>

Impa’s mouth thins cryptically.  “There was a great and terrible battle on that field, long, long ago.  Many lives were lost.  Many dear friends…”  She leans forward, almost expectantly, but to what purpose you do not know.  After a moment, she sighs and leans back again, tea set aside and hands folded carefully in her lap. 

“Courageous one, I have been waiting one hundred years to deliver the princess’s message.  These words, which the princes risked her life to leave you…  Well, you must be prepared to risk your life as well.  But I am afraid that burden may be too much to bear while you are still without your memories.  I leave the choice to you.  Are you prepared to risk your life for the greater good?” 

You frown down at your teacup, untouched on the floor before you and rapidly cooling. 

<< _What does this mean?_ >> you ask, repeating the arching back and forth sign Impa had used earlier.  << _It looks like SWORD but isn’t. >>_

Lady Impa and the young woman exchange quick, anxious glances. 

“My dearest Link,” she says carefully.  “Hero of Light, bearer of the blade that seals the darkness, appointed protector to the princess who carries the blood of the Goddess… That is your _name_.”

  

**

  

The stables at Dueling Peaks had been overwhelming enough—the great tent with its looming horsehead an assault of color and smells and _people_ , people _everywhere_ , calling out greetings and offering directions and elixir ingredients and opportunities for adventure and all of them wanting money for everything.  You had spent the first night crouched next to the cooking fire, your last few rupees spent on arrows and tack for your newly caught horse.

Kakariko Village is quieter, at least, most of its identically-dressed inhabitants more concerned with tending their produce than prodding the stranger in their midst, but the narrow paths between the cramped jumble of gardens and thatched-roof buildings still make your shoulders hunch.  Roseberry is equally disquieted, her soft ears flat against her skull as you lead her over yet another rushing stream, her hooves echoing hollowly on the ancient wooden bridge.     

There are cuccos _everywhere_ , their soft clucking nearly indistinguishable from the rattling of the orange wooden prayer blocks strung overhead.  Roseberry shies as a black and white rooster darts suddenly across the path.  You pat her neck and make soft, understanding noises. 

There’s no dedicated local stable, but the old woman you met at the village gate has offered you the use of the small paddock next to her house for as long as your travels keep you in the village.  The roofed stall is small but airy, with freshly laid straw and a bucket of grain and wild nuts hung in the corner.  Roseberry’s spotted hide quivers as you remove the saddle and blanket and brush your palm across the sweat-darkened line of her back.  While she drinks from the trough, you take a handful of nuts for yourself, cracking open the shells with an expertise you don’t remember honing.  The meat inside is faintly bitter, but not unpleasantly so.  It does leave a dry, gritty feeling on your tongue, however.  You shove gently at Roseberry’s neck, pushing her over just far enough that you can lean down and drink your own fill of the cool water. 

“There, look!  That’s his horse.”

Some of the water goes down the wrong pipe as you jerk backward, banging your jaw hard against the edge of the trough.  It’s all you can do not to cough or cry out in pain.  Roseberry startles back half a step, pawing at the straw roughly with one flashing forehoof. 

“Not so loud, you’ll spook her!  That one’s almost full wild, can’t you tell?”

Swallowing thickly around the last of the water, you press yourself tight against the side of the stall and peer out between a gap in the slatting.  Two men are leaning against the far fence of the paddock.  You recognize the one on the left as the old farmer with a plot on the other side of the village.  The other you think you’ve seen near the inn, swinging a stick at the darkness and mumbling to himself.  He looks slightly younger than the farmer, but with their matching white hair and the deep shadows of their sun hats it is hard to tell at this distance. 

“Never been much for horses,” says the farmer, pulling his straw hat further down his forehead.  “Had a donkey, once.  Strong as a buffalo and was real sweet on the lady.  Would have pulled a plow sunup to sundown and on to sunup again if she promised him a good scratch afterwards.”

“Well that’s no donkey,” says the other warningly.  “That’s a full-grown Hylian thoroughbred, a direct decedent of the mounts that lost their riders during the Calamity.  I rode one just like her back before the last of the guard disbanded.  They’ll kick a bokoblin’s head clean off its shoulders if it gets too close.” 

The old farmer lets out a pleased sort of grunt.  “Good on you, dear!” he calls to your horse. 

The two men fall silent, staring at Roseberry as she shifts restlessly in the stall.

“So,” says the farmer at length.  “Hyrule’s only hope, eh?  Do you think it’s true?” 

The soldier grunts non-committedly low in his throat.  “Sickly-looking fellow, isn’t he?  My Ilena was taller before she was half her majority.”

“My Ollie also,” the farmer agrees.  “And those were lean years, almost as lean as the Age of Burning Fields.”

The soldier purses his lips and tugs contemplatively at his beard.  “Then again, he is from another age.  Perhaps Hylians were smaller then.”

“Perhaps.  Still, a hundred years in slumber can’t have done him well.  Even Lady Impa admits that the chamber was experimental.”

“You should give him a pumpkin if he comes your way,” says the soldier.  “Fatten him up a bit.  That way if he dies he’ll at least have something to cushion the fall.”

The two chuckle darkly between themselves.  Roseberry lays back her ears and stamps once more at the earth.  You want to reach out to her, to press your hands soothingly into the hard muscle of her side, the soft swirl of hair at the base of her throat, but when you try to lift your arms they fall senselessly into your lap, limp as rags.  You blink down at your nerveless fingers, trying to force them to move, but they seem very far away, farther even than the voices of the old men as they bid each other farewell. 

 

**

 

When the old woman realizes you have been sleeping in the stall instead of the inn, she drags you into her house, face turned stubbornly away from all your protests about needing to save rupees and preferring a bed in the open air.  You’re surprised to find Lasil waiting inside, and from the way she jerks to attention in her chair the barker for the local clother is equally surprised to see you.

“My granddaughter,” Nanna explains.  “She helps look after me, now that I am old and frail.  She is such a dear, to place my own needs above her own.”

Lasil smiles in warm agreement, but once the old woman has drifted into slumber she draws you closer and offers a different, whispered explanation.

“My mother died of sickness when I was very young,” she says.  “My father not long after.  Nanna and my aunt raised me together.  But Auntie was killed fall before last.  She was a trader.  She went down Sahrasra Slope to sell carrots to Wetland Stables.  The slope has been overrun with bokoblins since before I was born, but it wasn’t until recently that they started patrolling on horses.  They aren’t good at catching horses on their own, too loud and too slow, so they target travelers with already-broken steeds.  My Auntie…”

She looks into the flickering lamp, eyes glimmering with wetness.

“Keeping busy helps,” she says, twisting her hands in her lap.  “I used to sit up late at night with Paya, after the shop closed for the day.  She’s always up late, studying or praying.  Then I would walk home and sit a while longer in the cooking shed, watching the fireflies that gather over the brook.  But now…”

She lets out a long, shuddering sigh.  Her youthful face looks gaunt in the lamplight’s greasy glow.  The wood and plaster walls press uncomfortably close. 

“They say the roads are dangerous at night, so I have to come straight home.  I miss them so much.  The fireflies.  And the night sky.  And Paya.  Now it’s the same tired thing every night.  Just this tiny house and my memories.”

She peers up at you expectantly through her eyelashes, mouth soft and dark, but you don’t know what it is she wants you to say.

 

**

 

You have seen no other travelers but Pikango since arriving at the village, but the innkeeper ignores him completely, content to let the old artist spend the night squatting in a far corner.  Your own avoidance of the inn’s soft beds causes Ollie no small amount of distress, however.  “Anything I can do to make your stay more comfortable, Master Link,” he says, head bowed low over the counter.  “You have only to ask.”

You have seen no monsters, no savage beasts, nothing that would require the stacks and stacks of arrows for sale at the fletcher’s shop.  Rola grins as you pick up a red-tipped fire arrow, but there’s a glint of something less cheerful in her eyes, something apprehensive, as if watching a great storm approaching from a distance.  “I’ll have to make more,” she mutters to herself, though you’ve only got rupees enough for a single bundle.  “So many, many more…”

Lasil stands outside the door of Enchanted Clothers, calling merrily out to you whenever you pass.  Despite their professed love of fashion, she and the shopkeep within are dressed in the same simple garb as the other villagers.  The only items for sale—a slick set of Sheikah stealth gear and thick Hylian travel clothes with leather armor fitted close around the tunic—are tailored exactly to your size.

It is a town of peace.  It is a town of relative prosperity.  There are almost as many children as there are cuccos. 

Stone upon stone upon stone clutters the graveyard, one almost atop the other.  At night, the villagers retreat to their homes, forbidden to walk the streets.

You move from house to house unchallenged, even in the dead of night. 

Since your first meeting with Lady Impa, each of the villagers has called you master. 

Thick, prestigiously bound books line the low shelves of Lady Impa’s home, tomes dedicated to history, to art, to warfare and poetry and ancient legend, but again and again you turn to the tattered public diary left open in the corner.  A confessional of sorts, open to all who seek Impa’s counsel. 

 _I am worried_ , reads one page.

 _I am afraid,_ reads another.

 _I miss her_ , reads a third, the characters scrawled in a large, childish hand. 

There are no dates on any of the entries, though by the yellowed curling of its pages you can tell that the book is very, very old.

You turn to the beginning.  The thin, slanting handwriting on the very first page is eerily familiar.

 _I fear I am not worthy,_ it says. 

“You are welcome to make your own entry, Master Link,” says Paya, head bowed and hands clasped trembling at her breast, indicating the brush and pot of ink waiting at its side. 

You stare down at the blank page, but no thoughts come to mind. 

You are hollow.

Outside, someone has laid out offerings of fruit for all but one of the squat stone frogs standing guard along the fence line.  The oversight plucks at you.  Frowning, you dig into your pouch, retrieving an apple, and drop it into the center frog’s barren bowl.

A warm puff of air and a tiny burst of leaves foretells the appearance of the korok.  “You found me!” it giggles, suspended impossibly at roughly eye level by a long-stemmed, rapidly spinning leaf.  You stumble backwards, eyes darting to the guard standing rigid mere feet away, but he doesn’t so much as cock a pointed ear to the korok’s musical rattling.

When you look back, the korok is gone again.   In the bowl, almost hidden beneath the apple you’d offered as sacrifice, is a dark, enticingly scented seed. 

 

**

 

The lights of the village fade into the darkness behind you as you make your way once more up to the glowing shrine.  According to your slate, the steep hill looming behind the shrine is the tallest point in this area.  From it, you should be able to assess the lands around you, marking any towers or shrines lit up against the night.  

You equip your sickle, expecting to have to cut your way through thick underbrush, but to your surprise the way beyond the shrine appears well-trod.  A narrow path winds between two tall banks of earth before stopping abruptly beneath a large wooden archway festooned with more prayer blocks.  You crouch down to examine the cluster of mismatched porcelain bowls laid out across the grass, touching three fingers to the pale liquid filling the largest and raising them to your tongue.  Milk, left out no longer than a day.  Brown apple slices fill a second bowl, while a third holds only a fragrant heap of ash with a single still-smoldering coal burning at its center. 

Something moves in the tall grass.  Something small and bright. 

As if sensing your gaze, the strange, glimmering shape—almost rabbit, almost owl—darts off into the distant woods.

You follow it.

 

**

 

This forest is ancient, its thick trees dark and crowded close enough together that you lose sight of the stars overhead.  You are quickly lost, but you find that you are unafraid, pushing deeper and deeper into the woods in pursuit of the blue light darting in and out of sight. 

The ground grows soft beneath your feet, the wiry bushes slowly replaced by great ferns and swaying clusters of pale blue flowers. 

You don’t see the shallow pond until you sink knee-deep into its muddy bank.  You stumble, struggling to extract yourself from the foul-smelling muck.  The distant, glowing shape vanishes completely at the sound of your splashing.  You grunt irritably, overbalance, and plunge face-first into the foul water.

You gag, spitting out a mouthful of duckweed and an unidentifiable green slime, hands sinking deep into the soft silt.  The air here reeks of decay and stagnant water.  The insects in the trees around you titter among themselves as they watch you sputter and cough and struggle to push yourself upright.  Even the rabbit in the full moon overhead seems to laugh at you.

Just to your left, a small, golden-orange mushroom unfurls from the muck, a faint golden light in a sea of dark, then another to your right, then another, and another, each one larger and brighter than the last.  You watch, dumbfounded, as mushroom after mushroom rises from the water, forming a densely packed staircase of fungus stretching out before you to a large, bulbous mass at the center of the pond. 

At last on your feet again, it seems your path is clear.

The mushrooms hold your weight easily.  As you draw closer to the strange bulb, it too begins to faintly glow. 

 _“_ Child _…”_ whispers a voice, unearthly and echoing.  The foul water encircling you trembles.   “Sweet child, _please…”_

If you clamber atop the largest mushroom, you can just reach out and touch the fibrous, thorn-studded skin of the great bulb.  It seems to breathe beneath your fingers, the orange thorns growing brighter and brighter the longer you maintain contact.  You can feel something thrumming, deep beneath the layers of veiny green tissue, a pulsing as if of a great heart slowly wakening. 

You wonder if you should be afraid. 

“I beg your help,” the voice continues, louder now, as if made stronger by your presence.  _“_ Once this place was a beautiful spring, but as time passed fewer and fewer travelers came with offerings.  I’m nearly powerless now, but if my power is restored, I can help you do great things _.”_

A slit parts in the side of the bulb, revealing a blinding, glimmering light trapped within.  A pale hand larger than your entire body worms its way out into the open night air, palm up to display a silver ring large enough to circle your waist and a thick bracelet studded with jewels the size of cuccos. 

 _“_ Quickly, child!  _Quickly!”_ The fingers curl inward, then flatten again, beckoning, grasping. 

<< _I don’t have any more apples,_ >> you sign, unsure if the spirit can even see you, let alone understand.  Your bag and slate are empty, most of the foodstuffs and monster parts you’ve scavenged sold off to Claree as a down payment.  The only thing left in your inventory is your shield and weapons:  the eightfold blade, a heavily-notched traveler’s sword, a spiked boko bow, a bent lizalfos dagger, the heavy moblin club, and a pair of strange, brightly painted single-hand clubs you’d recovered from a heavily guarded chest at the center of a bokoblin camp.  << _I have nothing worthy left to give._ >>

The voice sighs a great, earth-shaking sigh.  “How tragic… How dreadfully tragic. _”_ The hand retreats into the bulb, which withers and slips silently back beneath the waters, and in an instant the glowing mushrooms have vanished, leaving you knee-deep in a plain, algae-choked pond once more.  

You blink, unsure if what just happened was real or dream.  A faint, glimmering light near the surface of the pond draws your attention, but as you bend down and clasp your hand around it you realize it is no magical golden mushroom, but a firefly. 

You carefully unfurl your hand, watching it blink between the gaps of your fingers, the glow oddly pink instead of the usual green.  You should take this to Lasil, you think, but when you unfold your hand fullways to slip it into an empty milk bottle the tiny insect has vanished, leaving behind a smear of faintly tingling dust across your palm that glimmers for a few moments in the moonlight before it, too, vanishes into thin air. 

 

**

 

You kneel once more before Lady Impa, stiff and overwarm in your new Hylian armor.  She smiles at you grimly, already anticipating your answer.

Irritation flashes sour across your tongue.  You wonder why she even bothered to give you the illusion of choice. 

<< _For the greater good,_ >> you say, movements slow and mechanical, more empathetic signing restricted by your stiff gauntlets.  << _I am prepared to die._ >>

The ancient Shiekah leans forward, mouth a thin line, eyes wide and burning with the intensity of a youth long ago lost. 

When she speaks, her booming voice is not her own.

 _“FREE THE FOUR DIVINE BEASTS._ ”


	5. Lanayru Wetlands

With Lasil’s forewarning, you’re able to avoid most of the bokoblins patrolling the slope.  The wetlands glimmer silver in the morning sun below, an expanse of water and low trees that appears to stretch all the way to the foothills of the distant mountains. 

The orange glow of several spires dot the landscape, although on closer inspection with the slate’s telescoping feature you realize one dim glow is actually a long red crack running up the face of a large, flat-topped mountain.  You mark them with your slate, studying their location in the black, unmapped void thoughtfully.  Without further details it’s hard to say whether the closest tower will give you a map for the region Lady Impa had marked as home of one of the four divine beasts, but it’s as good a place to start as any.    

As you further survey the broad stretch of reedy water below, all thoughts of taking Roseberry with you quickly vanish.  You will have to find a stable to board her. 

Lasil’s directions again prove a blessing.  At the base of the slope you find a heavily-overgrown road that seems to ring the edge of the wetlands.  You follow it, confidence faltering as it turns towards a thicket of trees, away from the wide wetlands the stable is supposedly named after, but as the road grows broader and more cluttered with hoof prints your spirits rise again. 

It’s still early evening when you draw up to the brightly-colored tent, the golden glow of the lamp-lit interior just visible against the red and purple sunset.  Your knees lock as you dismount, stiff from the long day of riding, and you consider affording yourself the luxury of an actual bed.  Nanna had pressed a small pouch of rupees into your palm as you saddled up to leave, ignoring your protests as skillfully as when you had tried to refuse the kindness of her spare sleeping-mat.  If you spend it now, you will not have its slight, clinking weight to drag at you any longer.   

You rap your knuckles on the counter to get the dozing stablemaster’s attention, smiling and waving apologetically as he sits up with a start, then flip open your brand-new diary.  Another gift from Nanna, but the pages of simply-illustrated questions and requests likely to be of use in your travels had been Paya’s idea. 

You turn the diary so he can read it and tap your finger on the picture of a bed, then the picture of a horse in a stall, then the phrases _HOW MUCH_ and _ONE NIGHT_ written in oversized Hylian sigils.  You have other pages where Paya helped you carefully copy out the same requests in Sheikah characters, Zora cuneiform, Goron runes, and Gerudo script.  You keep your back straight and your chin up, as if you have used this system successfully on a thousand previous merchants, and hold your breath.    

“20 for a regular bed, 40 for a soft bed,” says the stablemaster robotically, still rubbing sleep from his eyes.  Over his shoulder, you can see a flurry of activity as one stable hand hurries to turn down the beds for the evening while a second chases out a muddy, gleefully-bounding dog and yet a third carries a heavy tray of drinks to the three Hylians and one brightly-plumed Rito huddled over a cracked wooden table.  “10 rupees for your—wait!” 

He looks back down at the page, seeming to _see_ it for the first time, then back up at you, brow furrowed and mouth half-open in an unreadable expression.  You shift your weight nervously and pull the diary closer to your chest. 

To your surprise, the stablemaster stands up straight, points a single finger at you, then raises both fists to chest-level, index fingers extended towards each other, and makes a single fist over fist pedaling motion mid-air, head cocked questioningly.

It had felt like this when you first stepped out of the cave, the hole in the earth behind you all the smaller and darker for the bright wide world open before you.   << _Yes!  Yes, I sign!_ >>  

The stablemaster beams at you, but his broad smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes.  << _My first wife deaf.  Many years ago dead.  Moblin_. >>  The sign he uses is different from the one you know, but no less clear:  the one-hand _muh_ finger-sigil arching out in front of his face in an exaggerated nose, teeth bared in a snarl.    << _Sorry if sign bad, less common here know sign.  Little practice many years, myself forget much.  Understand okay?_ >>

You nod eagerly, drinking in the movement of his tanned, work-calloused hands, crisp and clear regardless of his shaky syntax and somewhat limited vocabulary.  << _I understand you fine,_ >> you say, careful to keep your own motions as clear as possible.  << _I’m sorry about your wife._ >>

<< _Many years ago,_ >> he repeats with a forced shrug.  << _Moblins kill many more since._ >>   

Your hands falter in mid-air, unsure of what to say next.  Paya and Lady Impa had been the only two fluent in sign in Kakariko, and speaking with them had been different.  Like talking to characters in a play, their responses fluid and hollow with long rehearsal.  As if they had debated endlessly between them every possible conversational contingency in order to ensure you complied with your ultimate destiny.

This, though.  This is… messy.

<< _Can you tell me about the big mountain to the far north_? >> you ask, hoping to steer the conversation into less dour waters.  << _The one with red veins?_ >>

“Er…”  Brow furrowed, the stablemaster sheepishly extends his left hand, palm up, and arcs his cupped right hand to tap his fingertips against the opposing palm.

You repeat your question, doing your best to mirror his own syntax and replacing the sign for “veins” with “rivers”.   

The stablemaster nods in exaggerated understanding.  << _Death Mountain.  Home of Gorons.  If you go take many potions.  Very very hot.  Can cook meat on ground._ >>  The wrinkle between his eyebrows doesn’t completely smooth out, however.  << _You sign like Zora,_ >> he notes curiously, indicating eastward with a tip of his head.  << _They come here sometimes for trade.  Myself less good at Water sign.  My wife use Hylian sign mostly.  Also know Far sign of course._ >>

It’s your turn to furrow your brow in confusion.  << _Far sign?_ >>

<< _For when you on horse and want talk to them on horse far away._ >>  With a chuckle, he mimes riding at full gallop, one hand gripped tight around the reigns while the other waves overhead in exaggerated movements.  << _If you go to Faron most know Far sign, but more common know Hylian sign also. Highland stablemaster and daughter and son all deaf.  Very good with horses. >>_

This is the most productive conversation you’ve had since you awoke.   You’re so enraptured that you nearly forget why you stopped to speak with the stablemaster in the first place.  Roseberry paws impatiently at the ground, uncomfortable in her sweaty tack, and nips gently at your shoulder.

The stablemaster lets out a hearty laugh and whistles to the boy wrestling with the dog.  “Let’s get this one brushed and fed and bedded down before she gets too cranky, eh?”  To you, he signs, << _Good horse.  Very beautiful. >>_

A warm, unfamiliar feeling floods through your chest.

<< _The best horse,_ >> you agree.

 

**

 

It’s a long while before the warm buzzing fully fades from your body, but once it does you’re all the lonelier for it.  While you’re glad Roseberry doesn’t have to slug through the thick silt or test her footing on the narrow road of submerged logs you would still do anything for her company.

The morning grows hot, clouds of gnats rising from the reeds like steam from a pot.  You sweat through your thick Hylian tunic immediately, and your pants are none the drier after long hours wading through the water. 

You stick to the road as much as you can, eyes peeled for the monochromatic humps of camouflaged lizalfos.  The wetlands are unnervingly empty of monsters, however.  Your heart nearly jumps out of your throat the first time you startle a family of ducks into flight.  Grey-and-white feathered herons offer a more serene addition to the landscape, their bursts of flight announced by a slow spread of wings and a rolling bob of the head.  They would be easy prey, a good two meals worth in the legs and wings alone, but your bow stays on your back.  You hunt them with your eyes alone. 

You find a shrine on a low island, and when at last you emerge victorious you see something that chills you to the bone:  the black, swollen shape of a guardian.  You drop low as its blue eye turns towards you, and just as you’re gauging how best to maneuver around its line of sight six spider-like legs lift it out of the water and carry it further into the water-logged reeds. 

You sink back into the shrine’s open doorway, heart thumping hard enough that your whole body seems to pulse with it.  You’d seen the carcasses of walkers in the ruins at the base of Hyrule Plateau, but none that were still functioning.  Your own feet are rooted to the spot.  You stay huddled in the doorway until long after the sound of the guardian’s footsteps have faded into the distance.   

It’s mid-afternoon before you finally make your way back to the sunken wooden roadway.  Your slosh as quickly as you can through the water, less concerned about attracting monsters than you are with getting out of the guardian’s range as quickly as possible. 

You lose the roadway as the water rises to your knees, then to your thighs, the thick wooden logs at last obscured by even thicker silt.  You discover quickly that attempting a beeline for the glowing tower leads you straight into a sinkpool of unknown depth and breadth.  Attempting a swim of any distance in your heavy gear after a long day’s walk feels like a quick way to find yourself acquainted with the wetlands’ murky bottoms.  You retreat to a firmer sandbar and re-evaluate your path.  Looking north you can see a scattering of low bits of stone rubble, remnants perhaps of settlements long ago drowned.  Perhaps the bottom will be firmer there. 

You pick a lone surviving stone watch-spire as a navigation point and set out.  The water is still well up over the top of your boots, but as you walk you spy the skeletal remnants of fences and other recognizable structures rising out of the water.  A watch-spire stands guard over a picket-bounded circle of deeper blue:  an old fishing pond or water source, perhaps, now half-choked with reeds and golden clusters of lotus flowers. 

You stop for a moment, one hand resting on a rotting post next to a gap in the fence, and lean over to peer into the cloudy water.  You hadn’t been scolded for hunting the ornate gold and black carp circling the stilts of Lady Impa’s house, but the expression on Koko’s face when she’d seen you deboning one next to the fire had been reprimand enough.  This seems the sort of place a school of tasty fish might—

Something bursts out of the water in a flurry of foam, far too fast for you to do more than duck as it goes sailing silver overhead.  A serpentine trident thunks into a swell of the sandbar behind you, but before your fingers can close around the hilt of your blade two strong, clawed hands dart out of the water, grab your ankles, and _pull_. 

You lash out on instinct as you hit the water, connecting briefly with a long, hard body.  The creature lets go, and you scramble quick as you can back onto the sandbar, towards the long handle of the trident glistening in the sun.

“Sorry!” calls a voice behind you.  “You there!  I didn’t mean to scare you.”

You yank the trident free and spin around.  You don’t see anything at first, but then the reeds part and a lovely, low-finned head rises from the water.  A maroon-skinned Zora offers you a cautious wave. 

“My trident, thank you.”  The Zora reaches out, beckoning for it.  Their long arms are festooned with enough scars to rival yours, the membrane of the right fore-fin badly torn.  Their dark eyes stare at you unblinkingly.    “So sorry again.  Thought you were a monster I’d missed!  Though you’d certainly make an unfortunate-looking lizalfos." 

You puff your cheeks at the insult, which earns a low, rasping laugh from the Zora.  A woman, judging by the shape of her neck jewels.

You freeze, unnerved both by the certainty of this thought and the ease by which it had come to you.  The Zora plucks the trident from your slack grip and slips back under the water, red skin quickly lost in the murky depths. 

Your head throbs.  The sun overhead is extraordinarily bright, though dark clouds gather ominously to the east.  You retreat to a large rock alongside the pool, pulling an apple and your waterskin from your pouch.  Perhaps you are merely over-heated and under-fed. 

You take your provisions slowly, allowing the water and sweet fruit to ease into your limbs while the sun does its best to dry your clothes.  After a while, the Zora resurfaces, and begins a lazy, backward circuit of the little pool, trident tucked neatly against her slim, powerful body.  You watch her with open curiosity, entranced by the pattern of the ripples in her wake and the flash of her breastplate in the sun, but your gaze can’t help but turn with increasing frequency towards the spot where you last saw the guardian. 

“Don’t worry,” says the Zora, after several long minutes of silence.  “It won’t wander this way.  The bottom is too deep for it here.  As for lizalfos…”  She indicates her trident with a roll of her dark eyes.  “They won’t be a problem until next blood moon.”

You frown.  << _What do you mean?_ >> you sign, which only earns another unearthly titter from the Zora.  The spots along her crest stay unnervingly dim. 

“Full moon tonight.  Step quick, little lizalfos!”  With a wink and a flash of her razor-sharp teeth, she sinks a final time into the water. 

 

**

 

You’re halfway up the tower’s base when the moon rises red and round over the distant mountains.

You don’t notice it, too caught up in the pulsing ache of your left shoulder and drying your socks and boots as much as possible in the heat of the dead bokoblins’ meager campfire.   On the far side of the main path up the hill, this little overhang is just out of earshot of the rest of the hoard guarding the tower.  The seemingly unending rain that started shortly after you left the Zora warrior’s swimming hole has at last lightened to a fine mist, but the climbing over slick rock has gotten no easier.  In your exhaustion, you decide to risk a few hours’ rest and warmth in the meager shelter of the overhanging rock, drawing what energy you can for the long climb ahead of you.   

You don’t remember drifting into sleep.

Your dreams are crimson and strange, full of smoke that twists itself into monstrous forms.

_Link, on your guard!_

You startle awake, unsure if the voice you heard was real or dreamt, but there’s no doubting the surprised squawk of the three very real and very much alive bokoblins that have you surrounded. 

You scramble to your feet, shoeless and swordless, too busy trying to stay alive to pay much attention to the fat, red-purple embers settling across the landscape like snow.  The nearest bokoblin swings hard at your knees with its club, sweeping your legs out from under you again.  You go down hard, rolling desperately out of the way of a second, two-handed blow, and straight into the fire.

Your still-damp cloak saves you from the worst of the flames’ heat, but not all of it.  You scream in pain, rolling out of the fire and over and over again in the wet grass until you’re certain the last of the flames are out.  One of the navy-skinned bokoblins lets out a long hoot of laughter as you slam into a rock.

You gasp for breath, arms trembling as you struggle to push yourself back to standing.  Two of the bokoblins approach you slowly, clubs at the ready.  Your blunder seems to have given the third an idea.  It dips its club into the fire, holding it there just long enough for the wood to catch flame, then starts swinging it in a wide arc over its head, hooting a battle cry. 

Singed, dizzy, barefoot, and bare-handed, you have no other choice.

You run. 

The bokoblins are not expecting this, grunting in surprise as you dart around them and straight for the sheer rock at their backs.  You leap with all your might, fingers scrambling for purchase as you force yourself to climb and leap and climb and leap again up the slick, crumbling rock.

You lose two toenails and part of your right thumbnail to the climb, but with adrenaline pumping hot through your veins you do not feel their loss.  Your only intent is to flee, so you’re surprised when you crest the top of the rock face and find yourself at the tower itself.

There’s no time for rest or climbing strategy.  You fling yourself at the intricate lattice work, pulling yourself upwards hand over hand with the last dregs of your stamina.  A trumpet call goes out across the monster camps below, and you force yourself even higher, ignoring the greying of your vision and the increasing weakness of your limbs until at last, _at last_ , you pull yourself onto the top platform.

You do not have the energy to drag yourself away from the opening.  You lie as if dead, gagging for breath and trembling, most of your legs still dangling out in open air. 

“Traveler?  Traveler!  Are you all right?”

You struggle to open your eyes.  Looming over you is the upside-down face of a blue-pointed Zora, the bioluminescent spots lining their crest pulsing faintly in alarm. 

“Oh, you are hurt!”  Delicate, long-clawed fingers probe gently at the taught swell of your cheek, ice-blue eyes going round as they take in your singed cloak and bleeding hands.  Unlike the errant soldier doing lazy laps in the lotus pool, he wears no armor, lightly clad only in a tall neck cuff and low-slung waist jewels.  “What ever could have made you climb all the way up here in this state?”

You blink up at him, as baffled by his sudden appearance as he is by yours.  Now that the world has started to regain some of its color, you notice that this Zora is also in less than peak physical condition.  In the bright moonlight you can see that his cheeks are sunken, his ribs prominent, and the rough blue sandpaper of his protective dorsal skin has started to crack and peel along his crest and shoulders, as if he was badly sunburned. 

Your confusion must be apparent; his crest-fins lift briefly in embarrassment.  He straightens his shoulders, crosses both long fore-fins across his chest to provide a colorful yellow backdrop for his blue hands, and addresses you formally.

“I am Gruve of the Zora.”  His hands flash the signs for _messenger_   and _swiftest._ “By order of Prince Sidon of Zora’s Domain—”  He rapidly spells the monarch’s full name and signs an impressive series of titles, then fans both hands out dramatically before lifting them up to his mouth, index fingers hooking at the corners and pulling outward in a dazzling smile.  “—I am searching for a Hylian.  Or I was before...  I sought shelter in the ruins of this tower some weeks ago and awoke to a loud noise and awful quaking and… Well.  Here I am.”  He sniffs at the air, crest spots flaring bright.  “Is that smoked fish in your bag?”   

Your arms are still too numb for communication, the left burning as if stung by a thousand angry wasps, so you focus what little energy you have left into nodding.  Gruve hooks his hands under your armpits and drags you further onto the platform, head turned resolutely away from the long drop to the ground below.  He helps you sit up against the central pedestal, exclaiming with the appropriate alarm when he spots the long trails of blood left by your torn feet. 

<< _It’s nothing_ ,>> you sign guiltily, once you’ve rested enough to move your hands again.  Until this moment, you hadn’t considered that there might have been people _in_ the towers when you first activated them.  << _Please eat._ >>

Gruve tears into the fish with a ferocity that belies the refined minimalism of his jewelry.  You pull a hearty potion from your inventory and try to open it with still trembling hands.  Your left hand won’t grip the smooth glass with enough force to hold it steady, so you raise the bottle to your mouth and yank at the cork with your teeth.  You drink half of it in two quick gulps—just enough for the razor hot pain of your feet to fade to a tolerable pulsing—then tip out a sloppy tablespoon into your palm. 

<< _For your burns_ ,>> you sign, passing the rest to Gruve.  You rub the potion into your own peeling skin in demonstration. 

“You are a hero among heroes!” Gruve exclaims.  “Worthy of the Champions of old!”  Your ears dip low, but Gruve doesn’t notice, too busy slathering the healing elixir across his shoulders. 

“I spotted Prince Sidon on the bridge below just before sundown,” he explains, once he has eaten another of your fish and helped you slot the slate into the pedestal to download a map of the region.  “I did not mean to be gone so long as to cause my dear prince worry!  I waved and called to him, but for some reason I cannot capture his attention.  I had thought to jump to the river below but—”  He glances once at the far edge of the platform and shudders.

<< _You can climb down.  There are platforms along the way where you can rest.  Beware, there are monsters camped at the base.  I killed some of them but…_ >>

You trail off, unable to explain their sudden reanimation.  Gruve eyes you with renewed interest.

“Traveler,” he says slowly, pupils narrowing to contemplative slits as he eyes your ears and the Sheikah shield still slung across your back.  “You’re a Hylian, yes?”

You nod hesitantly.

“Well then!  My luck _is_ improving!” His crest spots flicker giddily, and he snaps twice at the air with his sharp teeth.  “To think!  Weeks stuck atop this tower and a Hylian hero comes directly to _me_!”

All of your protests are cheerily dismissed and come sunup you have reluctantly agreed to carry a message to the Zora prince of Gruve’s unfortunate predicament as well as offer your services to the domain.  The royal messenger has a glint in his eye as you slip on your one remaining pair of shoes—the soft leather of the low-slung footwear a blessing given your still-throbbing toes—and step shakily up to the platform’s edge, glider at the ready.

“Thank you for the fish, traveler!” he calls as you leap into the wind.  “May your journeys bring you something equally fulfilling!”

 

**

 

A shrine glows orange not far from the spot Gruve had indicated on your map, but with only half a hearty potion in you you’re in no shape to face the trial within.  Given its proximity to the tower, you’re better off returning to it later. 

You struggle to steer the glider, arms still aching from your hurried climb.  The rain has picked up again, pounding hard against the taught canvas and obscuring your target.  At last, two faintly glowing blue spires appear out of the morning mist.  You land hard, skidding across the mud in your soft shoes, but manage to stay upright.

Not the best entrance, but not your worst yet.

“Say hey there!  Young one!”  You look around, but can find no source for the trilling, faintly accented voice.  “Up top!  Above you!”

You squint up into the rain.  Someone seems to be standing on one of the bridge’s faintly glowing turrets, but it’s difficult to make out at this—

A large, dark shape springs into the air, does a neat somersault, and lands with a heavy thump on all fours in front of you.

The shape stands up.

And up.

And up. 

The immense Zora before you is the same rich maroon as the warrior from the wetlands, but without the deep scattering of scars coating his limbs.  The silver collar cupping his long throat is un-burdened with jewels so as to better feature the pale, smooth skin framed by the delicate scrollwork.  The pale pink dots lining the broad lateral blades of his forehead crest flash excitedly as he peers down at you with kohl-rimmed, golden eyes, arms flung open and forefins fully extended in joyous greeting.

“Aha!  A Hylian, I knew it!  Pardon me, but can I spare a moment of your time?"

Despite the forewarning of Gruve’s affectionate name-sign for the prince, you are wholly unprepared for the true brilliance of Sidon’s smile. 

“Link!  What a fantastic name!”  Though his signing manners are as fluid and formal as Gruve's--the dark red flush of his fingers providing a beautiful contrast against his white palms--he seems unperturbed by your omission of your own name-sign in your half-fumbled introduction.  “Is it common among Hylians?  I cannot shake the feeling that I have heard it somewhere before…”

You have no idea if it is common or uncommon.  You shrug.

Sidon chuckles, double rows of teeth glinting like polished daggers through the gloom.  “Well, in any case it is a strong name!  A strong name for a strong Hylian warrior!”

You blush.   << _I am not particularly strong,_ >> you say, suddenly keenly aware of the still-smarting burns to your cheeks, the mud slowly spilling over the tops of your low, crudely-made shoes.  You wish you had thought to pull a more impressive-looking moblin spear instead of the heavily-chipped traveler’s sword out of your inventory this morning.  << _Or a very good warrior._ >>

Sidon’s chest-gills flare in the faintest gasp.  You stare down at the mud, biting your lip as your blush flares hot to the top of your ears. 

“No no!  Do not be so humble!  I can tell just by looking at you.”  A hand as big as your head settles cool and gentle on your still-throbbing left shoulder, thumbing at the straps of your shield and bow harness. 

You dare to look up.

Sidon’s gaze isn’t mocking, isn’t sympathetic, isn’t consoling or tender or glinting with challenge.  It is clear and true and full of trust.  The royal aqua jewel at the tip of his feathered silver crestpiece offers a cool, steady counterpoint to the eager pulse of his bio-luminescence. 

“I am a Zora prince, after all.  I have an eye for talent that is unparalleled.”

Despite the cool weight of his hand and the chill rain soaking steadily through your cloak, indescribable warmth once more floods your chest. 


End file.
